on his return from Mexico,
and the inauguration of the carnival combined to the observance of a
dual festival day in the Crescent City. Up the river, past the rice
fields, disturbing the ducks and pelicans, ploughed the noisy craft
bearing "Old Rough and Ready" to the open port of the merry-making
town. When near the barracks, the welcoming cannon boomed, and the
affrighted darkies on the remote plantations shook with dire
forebodings of a Mexican invasion.

The boat rounded at the Place d'Armes, where, beneath a triumphal arch,
General Taylor received the crown and chaplet of the people--popular
applause--and a salvo of eloquence from the mayor. With flying colors
and nourish of trumpets, a procession of civic and military bodies was
then formed, the parade finally halting at the St. Charles, where the
fatted calf had been killed and the succulent ox roasted. Sounding a
retreat, the veteran commander fell back upon a private parlor to
recuperate his forces in anticipation of the forthcoming banquet.

From this stronghold, where, however, not all of the enemy--his
friends--could be excluded, there escaped an officer, with: "I'll look
around town a little, General."

"Look around!" said the commander at the door. "I should think we had
looked around! Well, don't fall foul of too many juleps."

With a laughing response, the young man pushed his way through the
jostling crowd near the door, traversed the animated corridor, and
soon found himself out on the busy street. Amid the variegated colors
and motley throng, he walked, not, however, in King Carnival's gay
domains, but in a city of recollections. The tavern he had just left
was associated with an unforgotten presence; the stores, the windows,
the thoroughfares themselves were fraught with retrospective
suggestion of the strollers.

Even now--and he came to an abrupt standstill--he was staring at the
bill-board of the theater where she had played, the familiar entrance
bedecked with bunting and festival inscriptions. Before its classic
portals appeared the black-letter announcement of an act by
"Impecunious Jordan, Ethiopian artist, followed by a Tableau of
General Scott's Capture of the City of Mexico." Mechanically he
stepped within and approached the box office. From the little
cupboard, a strange face looked forth; even the ticket vender of old
had been swallowed up by the irony of fate, and, instead of the
well-remembered blond mustache of the erstwhile sel